


Unknown unknowns

by PenguinofProse



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, fluffiest fluff, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25343818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenguinofProse/pseuds/PenguinofProse
Summary: Set early S4. Clarke and Bellamy face their fears together and it gets fluffy.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 14
Kudos: 104





	Unknown unknowns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ajmurphyblake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ajmurphyblake/gifts).



> Hello and welcome to a very fluffy piece of early S4 fluff written for a prompt kindly donated by Amber. Happy reading!

Clarke is helping to load the rover. That's something she has found herself doing rather often, in recent weeks. She supposes it's a little foolish – there are people in Arkadia with more physical strength, more suited to lugging around crates and sacks. And she's got a couple of other things on her to-do list, like saving the human race, for example. But she finds herself taking a few minutes most days to help out in the hangar bay all the same.

It's not _entirely_ because of Bellamy, OK? It's also because it's good for her to leave her office once in a while, and talk to people, and see the camp in action. It's a very sensible use of her time as leader of this place.

But she's not a liar, so she has to admit that it's at least _partly_ because of Bellamy. It's an opportunity to hang out, and pass the time of day with him, and discuss purposeful logistics of the kind they bonded over at the dropship all those months ago.

“Where are you headed today?” She asks him this morning, for example. She already knows the answer, because she runs this place, but she's not sure where else to start. Coming straight out and saying he's cute first thing in the morning doesn't seem like a very circumspect plan.

“Niylah's. Swapping this lot for the latest batch of dried meat.” He explains, hefting a crate and wandering over to the back of the rover with it.

“Great. Where do you want this?” She picks up a large canvas bag as she speaks.

“In the -” He stops talking, very abruptly.

She panics, just a little. She always does, when Bellamy disappears without warning. But when she turns to look for him he's still right there, standing at the open back door of the rover, staring into the vehicle in front of him.

How odd.

“Bellamy?”

“Clarke. Could you drop that and come here a minute?” He asks, in a voice most unlike his own.

She does as he asks. Not because she takes orders from him, or anything, but because he sounds strangely _distressed._ She walks over, hands outstretched towards him.

“What is it, Bellamy? What's wrong?”

“Could you just – come here?”

He's still rooted to the spot, still staring into the rover. She joins him, walks right up to his side and faces the same direction as him.

“What am I looking at?” She asks, puzzled.

“There. You see – on that crate, second from the left? Could you just -?” He runs out of steam, then, backing briskly away from the rover, crate still held out in front of him like a shield.

She follows his instructions. Crate, second from the left. There.

When she sees it, she almost laughs. Genuinely, she does. Right in front of her, on the crate in question, a medium-sized spider is harmlessly passing the time of day. It's doing nothing – _less_ than nothing. It's just sitting there, and she imagines for a moment that it's looking back at her.

“Did you kill it?” Bellamy asks, from several feet away.

She sighs. For a moment, she genuinely considers finding something to catch the creature and setting it safely outside on the grass. She's seen that on comedy shows filmed on Earth before the bombs. But in the end she decides it would probably be rather hypocritical, to have killed quite so many human beings this year but then waste five minutes over the fate of a spider.

She squishes it without ceremony, and goes to find Bellamy.

“It's dead.” She informs him dispassionately.

“My hero.” He responds, in a tone that strongly suggests he is trying to joke, but it is not entirely working out for him.

She shrugs and wonders what to do next. He looks really quite bothered by the whole thing, and she contemplates giving him a hug. But she supposes that Bellamy Blake, inside man of Mount Weather, heartthrob of the dropship, would probably not like people to make a big deal out of his fear of spiders.

She tries for a different tack. “So you've survived six months on Earth. You walked into Mount Weather like it was nothing. You crossed a battlefield dressed as Azgeda. And yet you asked me to kill a spider for you.”

He nods, jaw firm, still half-hiding behind his damn crate.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” She asks, irrationally hurt at the idea. “If it never came up, would you have ever said anything?”

“Why would I?” He asks briskly, clearly deciding that the conversation is at an end, heading back to the rover with his crate outstretched before him.

That's an excellent question, she decides. Why would he? Because they're friends? Because occasionally, in her heart of hearts, she allows herself to hope that they might be _more_ than friends?

Because she thinks there's probably no one else in the world he can tell, and she doesn't like the idea of Bellamy facing his fears alone?

She doesn't get chance to pursue the matter. Harper and Monty arrive, ready to set out for their assigned task. Clarke bids all three of them goodbye and goes to get on with saving the human race.

…....

Clarke cannot get the spider out of her head for the rest of the day. Well, not the spider as such. But the thought of what the spider might _mean_. The thought that Bellamy was scared, and might never have shared that with her. The thought that there are aspects of Bellamy's life she knows nothing about – and aspects of hers that remain unknown to him, now she thinks about it.

It makes her heart break a little. She at least has her mother, dysfunctional though their relationship sometimes is. She hates to think that Bellamy has no one, has never really allowed himself to show fear or weakness to anybody.

No, that's not true. He _did_ tell her about the spider, when it came up. He told her about his guilt, sitting under that tree back at the beginning of their friendship. And he's let slip a few other snippets along the way.

But Clarke has reached a resolution, by the time evening falls. She's going to go tell Bellamy that he can be more open with her about such things as fear and weakness, if he wants to be. And show him that, at the very least, she would like to get to know him better, beyond what she already knows of him as a leader and a friend.

She wonders how to do it. Maybe she should invite him to the bar, or something. No – they don't go to the bar, not ever. He knows she hasn't the time. So he would surely read something amiss in her words if she invited him there now. Maybe she could go find him and -

There's a knock at her office door.

“Come in.” She calls, hastily rearranging her face into an expression that looks more like _leader of humanity_ and less like _lovestruck teenage girl_.

But then it's Bellamy who opens the door, of course, so she allows her face to shift back to somewhere between the two.

“Did you have a good trip?” She asks, to get the conversation rolling.

“Yeah, not bad. There's not as much meat as we'd like.”

“There never is.” She concedes. “How's Niylah?”

“She's good. She sends her best to you. How were things here?”

She frowns. She cannot help it. “No closer to a solution. But Jasper didn't float anyone and no one threw anything at me, so I can't complain.”

He huffs out a hollow laugh, as she hoped he would, and takes a seat on the tired couch at the side of the room. That's promising, she decides. She likes it when he stays to hang out for a while, and it will give her the perfect opportunity to pursue the issue that has been bothering her all day.

“What else don't I know about you?” She asks, then curses slightly. That sounded abrupt, she fears, her eagerness to ask the question boiling over after a whole day contemplating it.

“What do you mean?” He sounds puzzled.

She's done it now, so she figures she might as well stand up and go join him on the couch. “After the spider this morning, it got me wondering, what else don't I know about you? Favourite food? Childhood hobbies? Fears, wishes, dreams?”

He looks somewhere between entertained and annoyed, and it makes for an odd expression. Now she comes to think of it, it's a combination of emotions he seems to show quite often, around her. All the same, she settles into the couch and listens to his response.

“You're aware the world is ending, Clarke? We have six months left to live and you want to spend the evening talking about my favourite food?”

“We have six months left to live and I don't want us to die without ever really getting to know each other.” She says, feeling small.

At once, his eyes soften, and she thinks she sees his hand edge a little closer to her arm. “I figure we already know each other pretty well, Clarke. We've been through a lot together, haven't we?”

“Yeah. A lot of war, and death, and survival. I want to know the everyday things.” She swallows, steels her courage. “I want to know what it would have been like, if we knew each other in peacetime, with more than six months left to live.”

“I get that.” He murmurs, voice soft. He's staring very hard at the carpet, and she wonders if he felt the full force of her words, there. If maybe she might have let slip just how desperately she wishes circumstances had not got in their way.

There's a pause. She doesn't know where they go next. She doesn't want to push things – he seems to think her idea is a silly one, but he's also got a certain warmth in his eyes that she thinks is probably relevant.

She really wishes she knew him better. She wishes she could make sense of him, and she wishes most of all that they had the luxury of time on their side.

He surprises her by speaking, confident and firm and over half way back to his normal volume. “I think you already know my favourite food, if you think about it.”

She frowns, thoughtful. “Apples?”

He nods. “What about you?”

“It's awful, but I really did like the chocolate cake.” She says, thinking back to Mount Weather.

He doesn't judge her for it, just nods and moves on. “Spiders still freak me out because they're so new to me.” He explains, and she figures that makes sense. They didn't have them on the Ark.

“I kind of feel like that about wasps.” She concedes. “You remember when Jonas got that wasp sting, the first week on the ground? And he cried about it?” She recalls, remembering one of the youngest of the hundred.

Bellamy nods. “The only hobby I ever had on the Ark was reading. Apart from looking after O, if that counts. You like drawing?”

“Yeah. And I liked cooking, too. I guess that's very Alpha Station of me.” She's nervous about this one, fears that it might make him judge her for the privileged princess she used to be. Seamstresses and cadets on Factory Station do not have the ration points to be choosy about what they cook, she's pretty sure.

“I wondered. I remember you shouting orders to the kids on fire pit duty back at the dropship.” He says, voice full of humour, not scorn.

“I wasn't _shouting_.” She argues with spirit. “I was _instructing_.”

He snorts, turns to her with a smile so wide she's briefly dazzled. She really needs to get over this foolish affection for him, she chastises herself. They have six months to live. She needs to save the human race, not fall any deeper into the dangers of loving her good friend.

They sit there and smile at each other for a moment. It's pretty foolish, Clarke thinks. They have better things to do. But it is so beautiful, just for a moment, to play at being a normal, carefree teenage girl.

Bellamy clears his throat. “Go on, then. What's your deepest fear, or whatever?” His voice sounds less playful, now, more nervous.

She frowns. “It didn't sound like spiders were your _deepest fear_.”

“They're not. But – you wanted to get to know each other.” He reminds her, slightly shakily.

She summons her courage. If she wants to show Bellamy he can be truly honest and vulnerable with her, she supposes she had better be prepared to open up to him, too.

“I'm pretty scared of myself, at the moment.” She murmurs, eyes fixed on her hands.

All at once his arm is around her shoulder, pulling her towards his chest. It's not like the more conventional hugs they tend to share whilst standing up, but it's better, she thinks – less a friendly greeting and more a heartfelt gesture of support.

“You want to tell me any more about that?” He offers, squeezing her tight.

She laughs, a hysterical, panicked sound. “I'm scared of the power I have all of a sudden. I'm an eighteen year old girl. Why am I making decisions that could spell the end of the human race? I kill people, Bellamy. People die when I'm in charge. You told me that yourself.” She recalls sadly.

“I told you that when I was angry and hurting. It's not true.” He tells her, firm. “You're in charge because you're the best for the job. It's as simple as that.” Another squeeze of her shoulders. “You got this, OK? I – I couldn't imagine following orders from anyone else.”

That's a big statement, she thinks, coming from the guy she used to argue over leadership with, the guy who used to make such a big deal of not following her orders.

She sighs, and reaches an arm around him in turn, such that they're now really cuddling more than anything else.

“What about you?” She asks, quietly.

“Losing the people I care about.” He answers without hesitation. “I've already lost my mum. I'm losing O, too, I can feel it.” He swallows loudly. “Losing you.”

“Losing me?” She echoes, her heart rate spiking.

“Losing you.” He confirms. “Why d'you think I'm here, Clarke? Surely you realised there was a bit more than _duty_ going on with the way I keep showing up here in the evenings?”

She laughs gently against his chest. “I guess I hoped. But – you know – six months to live and all. I didn't think I was allowed to be concerned with my own happiness, right now.”

“Hey, it's not just _your_ happiness we're talking about here.” He tells her, tone light, but she can hear the nerves beneath it. “There's my happiness, too.”

She's sick and tired of this. Sick and tired of them treading around the subject, sick and tired of holding back because the world is ending. The two of them could go a lifetime, she suspects, talking about not wanting to lose each other, about caring, and about _getting to know each other_. And at the end of that lifetime, what then? They'd die alone, ultimately.

Just like they will in six months' time if she doesn't get her act together.

She understands it, all at once – the fear they're really talking about, here. Yes, they might be scared of creepy-crawlies, and of power, and of loss.

But what they're most frightened of is clearly their own emotions.

She kisses him. It's as simple as that. She reaches up, arms still tangled with his, and kisses him on the lips, hard and fast. The world is ending, after all – she cannot afford to hang around.

He kisses her back, and in that moment, she realises that she always knew he would, deep down. He knits a hand through her hair, uses the other to pull her fully into his lap, and holds her close as he presses his lips firmly to her own.

She doesn't have a clue where this is going. She has no idea whether they're going to screw frantically for six months and then go up in flames, or whether they're going to live to a ripe old age surrounded by their great-grandchildren. But one thing she does know – everything in this life is less frightening, when she faces it with Bellamy at her side.

She might not know what the future holds, but she cannot think of a better partner to face it with as they venture into the unknown.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
